Fatigue of mind, and great exertion of its powers often give birth to this disease; and always tend to encrease it. The finer spirits are wasted by the labour of the brain: the Philosopher rises from his study more exhausted than the Peasant leaves his drudgery; without the benefit that he has from exercise. Greatness of mind, and steady virtue; determined resolution, and manly firmness, when put in action, and intent upon their object, all also lead to it: perhaps whatever tends to the ennobling of the soul has equal share in bringing on this weakness of the body.
From this we may learn easily who are the men most subject to it; the grave and studious, those of a sedate temper and enlarged understanding, the learned and wise, the virtuous and the valiant: those whom it were the interest of the world to wish were free from this and every other illness; and who perhaps, except for this alloy, would have too large a portion of human happiness.
Though these are most, it is not these alone, who are subject to it. There are countries where it is endemial, and in other places some have the seeds of it in their constitution; and in some it takes rise from accidents. In these last it is the easiest of cure; and in the first most difficult.
Beside the Greeks already named, the Jews of old time were heavily afflicted with this disease; and in their descendants to this day it is often constitutional: the Spaniards have it almost to a man; and so have the American Indians. Perhaps the character of these several nations may be connected with it. The steady honour, and firm valour of the Spaniard, very like that of the ancient Doric nation, who followed the flute not the trumpet to the field; and met the enemy, not with shouts and fury, but with a determined virtue: it is the temper of the Hypochondriac to be slow, but unmoveably resolved: the Jew has shewn this mistakenly, but almost miraculously; and the poor Indian, untaught as he is, faces all peril with composure, and sings his death-song with an unalter'd countenance.
Among particular persons the most inquiring and contemplative are those who suffer oftenest by this disease; and of all degrees of men I think the clergy. I do not mean the hunting, shooting, drinking clergy, who bear the tables of the great; but the retir'd and conscientious; such as attend in midnight silence to their duty; and seek in their own cool breasts, or wheresoever else they may be found, new admonitions for an age plunged in new vices. To this disease we owe the irreparable loss of Dr. YOUNG; and the present danger of many other the best and most improved amongst us. May what is here to be proposed assist in their preservation!